With its rover named Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."

Great panorama thanks! This must have be a composite of some of the first pictures sent - you can see Curiosity's jet pack lander's blast pits in grey, two each side of the lander. The wheels look clean and no tracks in the sand.

It's actually more simple than that. The arm on Curiosity is very flexible and extremely accurate. All they do is take a picture of the rover using the camera on the end of the arm, then take a picture from the exact same spot, but this time with the arm moved around to the other side of the frame. That way, the parts that were obscured in the first picture are now visible and vice versa. They then stitch the images together and voilà, the camera looks like it's floating.

The early space program, the moon landings and the program to explore the planets are a good example of what happens when government (NASA) and industry work together for a common goal. The government has a lot of faults, but not everything they do is wrong.

You take a bunch of pictures of every part of yourself from different angles and then you load all of them into a computer. Then you have the computer create an image of your complete self in 3D. Then you ask the computer to show you a view of yourself from a distance. It's very easy.

plainly flabbergasted by the amazing clarity and detailledness. i feel very thankful that we have the technology and also the engagement of fellow humans to share these wonderful results with everybody

Live and believe - it is wonderful!
We have before us an unprecedented way.
Claim astronauts and dreamers
That Mars will be apple blossom!
Well, when you and I friends,
The whole world to drive and pass.
Stars will meet the burgeoning Earth,
And Mars will be apple blossom!
I made ​​friends with the stars the future!
Do not worry about me and do not be sad.
Leaving this Earth, we are promised,
That Mars will be apple blossom!

When I was a little boy back in the 1950's I remember being terrified that Martians were going to come down to the Earth and invade. I used to stay up all night worrying about it.
Well now it looks like we've invaded Mars first and there doesn't seem to be anything up there to be afraid of. Now I often laugh at myself for being so afraid back then. It goes to prove that knowledge is power and having the facts does away with irrational fear.

The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".

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